Best and Worst Games of October 2011

October was probably the best month for games since the first few month of this year. There were so many critically acclaimed games, there was a three-way tie in the top-five-rated games of October. We saw the release of huge triple-A titles like Arkham City, Battlefield 3, and Forza. I think we all already know which game took home the “Best of the Month” honors, but let’s see which titles made up the Best and Worst for the month of October.

*Note: We looked at all the Metacritic scores for console and portable games (excluding Android and iOS) for the previous month and picked the highest- and lowest-rated games for the month based on critic reviews and user ratings.

No Doubt Batman: Arkham City is one of the highest-rated games this year, and while some users don’t rate it as highly as critics (which I agree with), it is definitely going to be a big contender for Game of the Year honors. Battlefield 3 might have been hurt by the incredible hype created by EA, but it was also hindered by online issues. Still, thanks to its strong PC presence, it made it to the top five of the month. Definitely nice to see two sports titles on the list, even if there isn’t a real NBA league right now. The best of list definitely shows the sign of the times, as every single game in the list is a sequel. There were some strong new IPs that released in October, but none of them were able to break into the top five.

Critics have their own opinions, but some people like to judge games based on consumers’ response, so let’s take a look at what they thought.

Best Games of October 2011 (User Ratings):

Orcs Must Die – PC – Average Score: 9.1

Rocksmith - Xbox 360, PC – Average Score: 9.0

Dark Souls – Xbox 360, PS3 -Average Socre: 8.2

Batman: Arkham City - Xbox 360, PS3 – Average Score: 8.2

Ace Combat – Xbox 360 Kinect – Average Score: 8.0

Surprisingly, only two of this month’s top critic picks made it onto the list. Orcs Must Die and Rocksmith were both unanimously gamers’ favorite games of the month, which is a bit surprising to me. That said, there were a lot of haters out there this month, seemingly more so than usual, so there were quite a few games that were just below 8.